Gibo: << Sure CJ...and what if your mum had aborted you?
Youre alive today by Gods Grace which says "thou shalt not kill". >>

Rubbish, Gibo. If my mother had aborted the foetus that became me I would never have existed.

I'm alive today because she wanted a baby and I've managed to survive the subsequent half century or so since she gave birth to me.

Nothing to with God, Grace or not killing people, but everything to do with choice and good luck :)

runner: "as long as I have the opportunity I will voice my convictions and opinions"

I would be disappointed if you didn't continue to express your convictions, runner. Believe it or not, I actually enjoy being challenged by sound arguments for different ideas, as I often learn from them. For example, your posts on home schooling and the state of aboriginal affairs in Australia are usually very informative, and thus make good reading.

However, they are the exception. The statements that started this discussion between us are far more typical. The one I took exception to was: "the vast majority of journalist and writers on this topic impose their pro choice views on anyone they can". The statement is accurate of course and I would would have no problem with it if, when others claim they are also an unfairly treated minority, you didn't then accuse them of seeking victim status. But you do. When I pointed out you use the same tactic, you bridled indigently. Thus you end up holding others to standards you don't accept when imposed on you. Do you think anyone finds this style of argument convincing?

The bible is full of good advice, runner. You say this is because the bible is an absolute truth, but most of us atheists accept it well. Take "love people but to hate sin". If your goal is to reduce sin, this is sound advice. Calling someone a pervert, a god hater, or vile just ensures they ignore will ignore anything you say. Embracing the person while attacking the sin, whether it be abortion, pornography or whatever, means you have a chance of implementing God's will.

But right now, your words are having the reverse effect. If I recognised your church group approaching in the distance, given the treatment you hand to everybody you disagree with here I'd be tempted to run a mile. When you resort to attacking the sinner you don't contribute to the discussion here on OLO, and you repel people from the church. You can do better.

Sams
I don’t want to know your life story. As a concerned citizen, I want to know how to decrease the abortion rate.

You label people “ignorant right-wing superstitious extremists”, (which seems rather abusive), and then you can only think of one way to decrease the abortion. rate. If abortion is a risk, then a number of control measures are normally necessary to reduce a risk (but as a self-proclaimed expert in risk management, you would probably know that already).

The author labels certain people “religious right”, but the author has not mentioned any way of actually decreasing the abortion rate.

Similarly, the vast majority of university academics who write about abortion, do not mention any way of actually decreasing the abortion rate either.

Next university academics will be saying that they are not biased, bigoted or prejudiced, and they would like to see a decrease in the abortion rate.

Rojo,
Birth defects are subjective, and abortion is very subjective.

Abortions can actually change with fashion, and there was noticed a decline in the abortion rate in some areas, when female celebrities such Madonna and Britney Spears had babies (or kept their babies).

I now tend to think of wide scale abortion as being a form of racial genocide, whether intentional or unintentional. This is currently being seen in Europe, where whole races of people will not last much longer, because they have not been able to produce enough live babies. Those races are being overrun by other races that can produce more live babies, and don't kill their babies in abortion clinics.

Survival of the fittest I suppose, and any race or culture that embraces the feminist ideal of wide scale abortion, is eventually doomed to extinction.

HRS: "As a concerned citizen, I want to know how to decrease the abortion rate."

As a concerned citizen, I want a viable fusion reactor. Can you build me one please?

HRS: "Next university academics will be saying that they are not biased, bigoted or prejudiced."

Everybody is biased in one way or another when it comes to social policy. That's why we value high-quality objective social science research by those trained to do it ("academics"). It is also why we have democracy. Doomed to fail are those that make their conclusions based anecdotal evidence, which often fails statistically, and on "common sense", which often fails outside of a person's domain of experience, or unscientific dogma, such as strongly-held superstitions, that make people try to bend the facts to fit their theories (or lash out at people when they are losing the debate).

runner: "After 40 years of promoting promiscuity and telling kids just to wear condoms the abortion rate has grown dramatically."

People have also been using more sun block - is this caused by promiscuity too? You must prove causality (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc). Happily, the abortion rate has been falling for over a decade despite the political hyperbole surrounding it. Furthermore, studies of the abstinence programs in the US showed that the people in the programs had just as much sex and at the same age as those not in them, and had the same rate of STDs. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I'm a staunch supporter of good sex education to help prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Please consider:

1. Unwanted pregnancies do happen and will keep happening - unfortunately, mistakes happen.
2. Thus we must address the consequences, not sweep the unfortunates under the carpet. It surprises me that some would-be Christians fall at this hurdle.
3. Where people disagree is the balance of rights between the unborn and the mother. Some people treat a single-celled embryo as a person with a full complement of human rights, and others don't. The others are dominating by a very large margin (getting larger too I'd speculate).

Can someone show me one of these "pro-abortionists"? This debate only ever plays out between anti-choice advocates who wish to dictate how women may treat their own bodies, and pro-choice advocates who respect the decision to either abort or bear a child.

If you don't want an abortion, don't have one. That should be the end of the argument.

SamS,
Even though you are an arrogant and abusive individual, who finds abortion amusing, and also likes to talk about themselves, I would agree that research and statistics would be an important requirement for decreasing the rate of abortion (if decreasing the rate of abortion is required).

Unfortunately Australia is keeping virtually no reliable statistics on abortion. Even NZ keeps much better statistics on abortion than Australia (and makes them readily available to the public), and NZ carries out less abortions than Australia.

So research into abortion in Australia cannot be adequately undertaken, when so few reliable statistics are being kept.

If someone wanted to carry out a course in risk management, they could always use abortion in Australia as an example of how not to carry out risk management.

Virtually no reliable statistics are being kept, virtually no research is being undertaken (except biased or feminist type research), and it appears there is not even a list of ways to reduce abortion.

In terms of risk management, abortion in Australia scores a D-.

Next university academics will be saying that everyone should attend a university course in risk management, (while simultaneously ignoring abortion, and definitely not thinking of ways to decrease abortion).